The Twelve Joys of Christmas: The Joy of the (Holy or Un-) Family

 
The Twelve Joys of Christmas: 

The Joy of the (Holy or Un-) Family

Missy and I went up front after mass on Christmas morning at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Austin to look more closely at the creche. I usually spend most of my time admiring the animals because they look pretty much like animals. Joseph and Mary and baby Jesus and the shepherds look sort of unrealistic to me. I mean, they look German, to tell you the truth. And I'm pretty sure they really were Palestinians. Also, for peasants, they are decked out in awfully beautiful costumes.

I have a lovely Navidad o tres (o mas) that I bought in the market at San Antonio. I still have at least one, I mean, because I've given several of them away over the years to people I love. I like those more, even though the characters still don't look like Palestinians. They do, however, look something like Central American peasants or laborers or something other than very well-dressed Renaissance Germans. 

But seriously I really do like the whole creche tradition. The nativity scene, as they say. The essence of Christmas, they also say, is the coming of Christ. The birth of Christ. Short version: Christ. And, obviously, that is true. Except when it isn't. And it isn't exactly true when you leave out everything else involved in that event except the babe, the son of Mary. Like, especially the animals. OK, also Mary and Joseph and the shepherds. And those wise guys from Orient R. 

My point is, or could be if I would just focus, that Jesus the Christ is NOT presented to us as a theological abstraction or as a person (divine, human, both, or otherwise) without a context, without a material web of relationship, without . . . a family. 

Growing up, I always heard of "The Holy Family." And, once I grew up just a little more, I was pretty sure that the phrase didn't apply to my own specific family. I mean, I think you've already heard about Missy's reign of terror over her three brothers (Ironic Advent #27). My father and mother, who had read Dr. Spock, allowed her to do that that, whereas I'm sure that St. Joseph would have protected the holy infant so tender and mild from the fingernails of a vicious sister. 

And, in typical Ben Camino fashion, I appreciate that the great feast, the great celebration of Christmas (I know some people aren't celebrating or feasting, but please allow me my inflated language, dear reader), is put in a very human context, a very familiar context, to all human beings in all human cultures. Family. 

Families of course can be a pain in the donkey (am I going too fast for you? just wait, because I start going faster), but for the purposes of this reflection and, also, just because it is true, I want to reflect on the beautiful and emotionally resonant fact (to me at least) that the entire Christmas event, the story of this gracious gift to humanity, is embedded (literally) in the reality of a family. Another gracious gift to humanity. Except when it isn't.

Jesus is the reason for the season says the sign at Bud's Carwash. But the creche and the gospel readings and the entire artistic tradition of Christmas tell me not to forget Mary and Joseph. As we share gifts and celebrate love, we also share and celebrate the gift of family, the Holy Family. And, I think, our own not-so-holy families. 

Even the Holy Family might be an falsification if we insist that "holy" signifies a kind of calm, undisturbed, transcendental state of being. Holy bliss interpreted as a kind of perpetual  sleep-walking in heavenly peace. This doesn't fit well with my experience of family. I don't "relate" to it, as we used to like to say in Junior High English class.

But it also doesn't fit well with the experience of "the Holy Family" as described in the ancient records we have. Saint Joseph was going to divorce Mary until an angel stopped him. Jesus sneaked out of a caravan and stayed behind in Jerusalem once, given his parents quite a scare. And they let him know they didn't like it. (Being Jesus, he answered rather cryptically. I'd say he was "passive-aggressive" but I'm sure that's a sign of my own essential not goodness.) Mary might have been a little pushy with Jesus about that wine at Cana of Galilee, and he might have let her know about it in his usual cryptic way (more business about his Father's business). 

Later someone sent a message that his family was outside the door, and wanted to talk to him. He said (cryptically?), "Who are my mother and brothers?" I can imagine just as several people in the audience were pointing outside, thinking he might have temporarily lost his sense of direction (or worse), Jesus pointed straight to his best friends (his disciples the text says) and said, "This is my family." Oops. What ever happened to honor your father and mother, Rabbi?

Well this might distress us. Except when it doesn't. I mean, my extended family is SO . . . dramatic than I kind of like the fact that the Holy Family might have occasionally experienced some friction, even some trauma. 

But there they are. In the manger. Up front in church, part of the story leading us to worship and wonder. 

My family? Where do I start. I have so much to say that I won't say very much at all. Just this very, very recent experience. How recent, you ask? Today. Well, the second day of Christmas, 2016, December 26th, the feast of St. Stephen. 

Today my family had a kind of reunion in the little cowboy town of Lampasas, Texas. About an hour and a half from Austin. It's really more interesting than that, because, more than a reunion it was a union. I did get to see my cousin JoAnn and her husband Bud, whom I had met before. But we Rickes (my brother Gordon, his wife Margaret, our sister Missy, and myself) also got to meet our second cousin Julie Cain Landrum, her husband Andrew Landrum, and our second cousin Rebecca Greco--none of whom we had ever met before. 

In fact, Rebeccca, who for reasons I won't go into this time, had never connected to any of her father's family until just the last few years, so she was discovering a whole family which was already hers (technically) but still not hers (experientially) before today. 

Needless to say, it was quite an event. There were first-time meetings, there was amazing food, there may have been drink, I'm ashamed to say that there was no dancing, but there was fine playing and singing around a the bonfire. Really good playing and singing. [Editor's note, the author may have been playing and singing].


There was also a visit to a 19th Century cemetery on the property. And, more than anything else, there were stories. Family stories. Some stories most of us knew but bore repeating. Other stories only some of us knew that needed to be shared with the others. Some stories that none of us knew except the specific story-teller. 

A family is a material web of relationship, as I said before. It is also a kind of shared consciousness, a shared imaginative experience, more than the sum of its parts. It is a book, always in revision, always being edited, always being interpreted by us, and always interpreting us. That book, that shared imaginative experience, was expanded today. And every one of us in our family is a little bigger. Or perhaps, since in a way we are one, we are stretched out onto a wider field of concern (I'm playing with a John Donne image here, but trying not to give in to him completely). 

Here is how who we were grew into who are.

A girl, age twelve, shows up at the home of the grandmother she had never known to ask for a picture of or some information about the father she had never known. 

A couple of feisty (I won't say rowdy, oops, just did) Austin rockers, figure they will try to make a go of starting a winery out in rocky Lampasas, on one of the prettiest (and loneliest) patches of God's earth you will ever see. 

Along the way they both get cancer. And both survive and are cancer-free. 

A young girl, not quite so young anymore, runs away, sort of she says, with her slightly older sister, to Los Angeles. Gets a job the first day. Meets a nice Baptist of whom Catholic mother would never approve. Things happen. Some other things. They find a priest to bless the wedding just in time to return home to Houston. 

Everyone says, you have our father's sense of humor. 

I find out that my cousin's daughter's husband is CRAZY about Tolkien and is a writer and I need to check out his blog. 

I find out that my cousin's husband's son is CRAZY about Tolkien (and Shakespeare) and is  big-time into literary research and I need to check out his blog. 

Somebody almost didn't come because her beloved little chihuahua escaped the night before, frightened by the neighbor's fireworks. She lives in the hills so finding "Rosie" seemed impossible. Sister and brother walk and drive up and down the local roads. Until a little neighbor boy comes chasing her down the street, calling "Rosie, Rosie." Tears are shed. She holds Rosie for an hour straight. Then gets cleaned up and comes to the party. 

She comes with her sister-in-law. Another cancer survivor. Going strong. Telling stories. Witnessing to the bond we share. 

Brothers harmonize around a fire. They've been doing it for longer than our long-lost cousin has been alive. And she is 39. Even if I were humble, which I'm not, I would still say, they are damn good. 

Also, before I forget--my Lord, this is a good-looking family. 

Years ago those same brothers with the brother of the father of the long-lost cousin AND the younger brother and sister of the (then) young girl who ran away to Los Angeles would gather around a fire in the backyard of their late mother and sing much the same way. In fact, some of the same songs. Many of them are gone now.  But they felt close to us in our songs tonight. 

We walk together to an old grave site on the property, admiring the cow and the bullock, staring at us from across the fence. We wonder why the settlers started burying at this site. Turns out, lots of arrow heads and other artifacts have been found on the same site. Maybe it was a Comanche burial ground before the settlers came. Those of us who know we have some Native-American ancestry feel even more at home on this amazing land.

You know. It's not easy to feel at home in this world. As you grow older, it's not always easy to keep a family together. Heck, my kids were all in Brooklyn for Christmas while I was in Texas. But, I like to think we are pretty close. I'd be very, very unhappy to think we weren't. That they didn't love me and that they didn't know that I loved them. 

I have a friend about the same age with children about the same age, and he was lamenting to me that they were all so distant. They all seemed to NOT like him. That hurt. 

I've done plenty to be unlikeable in my day, both to my children and others. But somehow, probably thanks to the influence of their mom and other wise mentors (and maybe I did some things right), they genuinely seem to love and care for me, for their mom, for each other. When my brother Noel was dying it became a total family event. My two sons were in Brooklyn, and they kind of just were the people you hoped they would be in such a situation. Before I could get out to New York, they would cover for me. When I got there, they comforted me. After he passed, everyone else dropped everything and flew in to join us.

And it goes further than that. My sister, childless, loves these wonderful adult children of mine as if they were her own. Feels for them as if they were hers. And they, my amazing children, treat her the same way. I've been an emotional wreck lately, but never more so than when my sister cries and tells me how wonderful my children are. 

Hmmmm. I guess that's not always the case. I'm sure the nuns wouldn't call mine a Holy Family. But I feel blessed. 

I know I had real problems with my family when I was younger. Stayed away a bit. Sure things were difficult at home, but more than that, I was just establishing my own life, my own boundaries, my own thing. Some people freak out about that, both parents and others. I'm pretty sure that's just natural and normal. Ducklings leave the nest, trauma enough for one life. But eventually they also REALLY leave. They quack goodbye and are off to make their own little ducks to jump out of trees. 

But because we humans both do THAT (necessary and good but also painful separating) AND THIS (relating for a life-time as extended family), we have unique family joys and unique family "issues." 

It takes patience, love, boundaries, and communication (not my strong suit, unless we mean writing long essays). But it's possible. As long as we remember it doesn't happen in a day. Sometimes it happens after 39 years. You finally meet your family. Or it takes a few years of adjustment before parents become less of the authority and more of the wise (if goofy) mentors. 

But the unique slant of the Christmas story is that families are not just warp and woof of human life, but they are "embedded" in our finest stories of love, and flourishing, and, if I may, salvation. 

Jesus finally saw his cousin (the one who kicked his momma's tummy when pregnant Mary came to visit) again down at the River Jordan. My cousin's daughter is named Jordan. I am Jordan's third cousin, I guess. My name is Joseph. Joseph was the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus. You see how it works? Cue "The Circle of Life."   

My family.     

My long-lost cousin shares with us the New Testament the father she never met carried in Vietnam. Shares a copy of the picture she got from the Veteran's Administration. She was an adult by then. It was the  first time she had ever seen his face. We all say how much she looks like him. She is a beauty. He was a handsome devil. Literally. OK, I guess that isn't literal. 

As she holds it tenderly in her hand, we all reach in and touch the New Testament, remembering him. Honoring this story. Feeling in our fingers and our hearts, the flawed, painful, but today joyous gift of family reunion. Or union, as the case may be.

We aren't the Holy Family. I'm not even sure the Holy Family is the Holy Family if you mean what I think the nuns at Our Lady of Mercy sometimes meant. But I'm glad Jesus had Mary and Joseph. They needed him, the theologians say. He needed them, my gut tells me. 

The fire is dying down. We sing "Won't you look down upon me Jesus, you've got to help me make a stand. You've just got to see me through another day." We pack up. We hug. And say goodbye. Tears may have been shed. 
The Unholy family stretches a little wider. 

long-lost cousins

The Twelve Joys of Christmas: Babies (Falling Down)

The Twelve Joys of Christmas: 

Babies (Falling down)

I know some people who could watch the Planet Earth video clip of ducklings falling out of tall trees over and over again. I suppose the appeal is some combination of the cute, the weird, the brave, the magical, the almost miraculous (I mean it's a long way down, but they survive). 

Let's face it, a lot of us like cute babies of all kinds--humans, of course, but also puppies and kittens and colts and calves and ducklings and those darling little Velociraptors from Jurassic Park. I've never loved a baby scorpion  but there must be a scorpion researcher somewhere who does. 

And this very human wonder and joy, assuming it is not just another socially-constructed bit of consciousness (but if it is, then the idea of social construction of consciousness is also socially-constructed so I'm not sure why anyone would appeal to it as a truth claim), relates to the deep physical, mental, and emotional "meanings" of the feast of Christmas, which begins today. The day of the celebration, the joyful participation in, the Nativity of Our Lord (as some folks refer to it, anyway). If you aren't one of those folks, I hope you will stick with me through the twelve days of Christmas, dear reader, because I hope to be writing for you as well. 

The idea of a king or a messiah coming to save us from our enemies and, perhaps more importantly, save us from ourselves is good news and a cause for great joy in and of itself. But there has always (or a least for a really long time) been great importance given to the idea of this birth, this baby, the really weird event in which, the stories say, some divine presence came to live in and somehow "be" in an animal body. And, unless we have strong reason to think otherwise, a cute baby animal he was. Maybe even with those cute big eyes that some baby creatures have.

Certainly, he was, like all babies since forever, but especially all babies in the First Century, all babies before penicillin, all babies born into poverty (and we could add to the list), a vulnerable creature. There is something about the vulnerability of babies (and baby ducks falling out of tall trees or tiny baby pudu deer or baby kittens) that appeals to something in human hearts (which I use for shorthand for whatever that is in us that makes us say we have "hearts" in precisely this way). Something in the vulnerability of babies moves us, we hope, to attend to them. To love them. By love I mean . . . well, I'm too tired to get into that. Let's just figure out what love is, in all its lovely forms, as we move along through Christmas. But here I include more than deeds of kindness. I mean, also, the attraction, the magic, the emotionally moving appeal they make to us. That stuff.

There is also something innocent in these newborn creatures. I know Augustine would argue with me, but it's not my point anyway, so he'd lose at least this argument. I don't know if they are judicially innocent, as such. But they appear to us as innocent. We value that innocence. We, sometimes, at our best, want to protect that innocence. And, again when we are at our best (or when we think of ourselves as being at our human best), we are distressed at least and perhaps totally heart-broken by innocence violated. Of course, this MAY apply more just to human babies and human children, but I think imaginatively and emotionally we transfer this over onto animals as well. 

There is, of course, also the issue of need. Babies are needy. We love to see babies nursing. They somehow know how to suck as if there lives depend upon it. Which, in fact,  they literally do. We like to play "dress up" with our brothers and sisters when they are smaller (or at least we help them get dressed). Because . . . they need. Everything. They are needy little creatures.  

Sometimes, of course, we complain about needy people. But seriously, babies? We don't judge them for that. We don't hold it against them. We hold it against us and we hold it against others (even in court!) if we or they are not concerned, are not careful (in the good old-fashioned sense of the word) about the needs of the neediest.

Baby Jesus, the son of God, who shone radiant beams from his holy face (well at least  in song and illustration)? What about him? Let's assume for now that he was innocent. But could he have been needy? Vulnerable? I suppose so. His mother and father were careful about him it appears. They didn't leave it to the angels, for heaven's sake, to swaddle his loins (since, it's Jesus, I assume he had loins instead of the more vulgar stuff the rest of us need swaddled). 

Being divine I suppose ambrosia would have been his food of choice, but, as far as we know Mary suckled him just like her momma did for her and so on back all the way to Mother Eve (whose milk, they say was tainted).  At some point, Mary must have said to Joseph, "I've got to feed the baby." Which might be translated into Ben Camino language: "I/we am/are under an obligation, on the basis of the needs of this child I/we have brought into the world, to provide the nourishment he needs without which he will perish (barring angelic interference--see Ben Camino's point above about swaddling)." I love when mothers talk like that.

We know Ambrose focused lovingly on the scene at the manger in his wonderful Advent hymn from the 4th Century. Deep theology, but also some attention to the imaginative/emotional charge of the nativity event. I wrote about that in an Ironic Advent Meditation. 

Certainly, in the age of St. Francis and, through his influence, ever since, we have emphasized the idea of gazing on and meditating on and having some deep emotional human response to this vulnerable, innocent, needy child who came to us to save us and to show us love,  but who also needed us (or our human ancestors anyway) to care for him. 

Maybe I should say "allowed us to care for" rather than "needed us to care for," but I'm not sure the distinction matters for this reflection. I'm not looking at the theology of the nature of Christ. I'm thinking of how sweet a thing it is, as part of the Christmas mystery, that this very profound and joyful response to darling, dear, innocent, vulnerable, needy, little, sometimes messy creatures, becomes a central aspect of our worship and our numinous wonder. 

I asked a friend who may be slightly addicted to videos of baby animals (especially ducklings falling out of tall trees) how to account for this wonder (if not worship). And, despite my snarky use of "addiction," I would heartily recommend baby animal videos as therapy for folks who need to feel, to care, and to laugh (a lot--see the link to the video at the end of this piece).

Surprisingly, her first response was not to say how cute they are. Surprising because they are really stinkin' cute. What she actually said was, "they are just so innocent."  High five, I may be on the right track. Don't look at me like that. I wrote innocent before I received any input from the baby animal video addict. She also said, "those big eyes just get me." Um, OK, so I do go back AFTER she said that and stick it into the early part to make it look like I was really on the right track.  

I didn't ask for a theological response, but I got one of those too. "If whoever made those baby ducklings cares enough to cover the ground below in a blanket of leaves, then maybe I have somebody looking out for me too. It helps me feel safe. I feel like I'm falling (and flailing) through the open air pretty much all the time, and it's not pretty." 

My baby animal video addict friend was not trying to claim, I'm sure, that leaves on the ground under the trees from which baby ducklings happen to fall is definitive evidence for the existence of a loving, powerful God who would send His son to be born of Mary in Bethlehem of Judea during the reign of Augustus Caesar while shepherds watched their flocks by night. Just that it has an emotional and imaginative resonance. Maybe like the old "his eye is on the sparrow" idea. I can understand that. That appeals to me too.

Well, I can't lie. I think babies are cute. Including baby ducklings. But, there's a little ironic twist at the end of the Christmas reflection that should remind you all that you are still somehow in the Ben Camino Universe (poor, poor pitiful you). 

Baby ducks don't fall out of trees. 

They jump. They leap. They fly with abandon to what should seem like the very scary forest floor below. 

I suppose all babies do dangerous, crazy things (within the limits of their physiology). They don't know they are dangerous or crazy. They don't even know they have a physiology. They are so . . . new to it all, they just do what they do. Babies . . . baby. And they baby with beautiful freedom. 

My expert friend also says  that "they are just goofy, and they don't care who's watching." She adds, profoundly I think, "I wish I could be more like that." Not that we should expect creatures to stay babies and to act like babies (doing goofy and dangerous things) their entire lives. We already have a name for creatures like that. Ben Camino and his ilk. 

And, in truth, sometimes, in fact, we should care who's watching. Right? But don't you agree that, all things being equal, we probably care too much of the time, about too many "watchers," and for too many of the wrong reasons? Surely we can agree that much of the time we need to be more "goofy" and to care less about who's watching. 

The baby ducks jump from the trees. How goofy is that? Baby Jesus, love's pure light, the babe, the son of Mary, according to the ancient stories anyway, leapt, in a rather reckless manner (by most standards), from what would appear to be his true home into the not-so-safe forest floor of our own messy Planet Earth. And I know this sounds crazy to the folks who don't believe or are trying to figure it out but are pretty sure it might be crazy. I'm only trying to explain. It's OK to think it's crazy. But you might keep pursuing some of these ideas. At least the definition of love, which will take all twelve days of Christmas.

But the story goes that in his innocence, he chose, he embraced, he jumped into a vulnerable, needy human existence. Somehow, he wasn't just another goofy duckling, although he looked an awful lot like one. Theology says he is the god/man. That makes him, also, the god/baby. But he wasn't a shiny god just dressed in a baby animal body. He a god and a baby animal. I will explain that next time (I won't actually).

We gather at the creche, as Missy and I did today at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Austin, in wonder and, sometimes, worship. We say lovely prayers, sing lovely songs, and perform ritual actions that help us locate and hold on to what matters most. But something beyond doctrine moves us, touches our hearts (don't make me define that again), grabs us by the whatever baby animals grab onto in us, and reminds us of our own babies and our own babyhood, of our own need and our own good human desire to provide for the neediest, of our own vulnerability and our own joy and wonder at seeing such little miracles in this sometimes stale and sterile world. 

And, in the wisdom of Christmas, if there is such a thing, the will of God is united with the physical/imaginative/emotional core of his most highly-evolved creatures on planet earth to make something magical and meaningful and delightful. Cue giggling noises. And wonder. And very big smiles.

Here is the link to the Planet Earth Video. Please watch it.  

Ironic Advent 2016 Meditation # 27b: Waiting in the Dark (Missy Ricke)

Ironic Advent 2016 Meditation #27: 

Waiting in the Dark

*A Guest Meditation for Christmas Eve by Missy Ricke.

Dear Ironic Advent Friends, I have often mentioned my sister Missy in my meditations, as well as other members of my family, especially this year with my theme of "roots" running through the pieces. This meditation by Missy provides a new perspective (hers) on our family, especially our mother and our father. 

It also tells the story, or suggests it, of Missy's own horror story of despair and soul sickness and addiction. I hope someday you will have a chance to read a longer version of her story, how she came out of a very great darkness into something like hope and something like light. She has been helping other people without much hope or light for almost thirty years since she got help through A. A. and N.A. And now, take it away Missy---


Okay, here we go Dear Reader (as Ben Camino would say). As you will soon find out, I am not a writer. Well, I am writing this, so I guess I am a writer. For right now. But not by trade or training.

I am writing this out of love for my exhausted brother, and well . . . not too sure about other reasons why. Fame and glory? Some need to expose myself in a public way? A healing catharsis? No, I guess it's mostly out of love for my exhausted brother. Who asked me to write one.

I am the sister of the handsome and dangerous Ben Camino [Editor may have inserted something in the previous clause]. I am the only one he has, the sister that was little with him, that cuddled with our dad with him, that envied the “boy toys” he got for Christmas and Birthdays. 

I am the sister who  used to boss him around. When the boys were younger, we used to play queen and slaves, a game I made up. I really liked that game. It was fun. I made the boys dig a ditch in the vacant lot next to our house which we named the Missy-sippi. 

I am the sister that had to be in the same class as him, because when Ben got bored with the fourth grade at Our Lady of Mercy school, they promoted him up a grade. My grade, my place. And now I had to share it with the “shiny Ben Camino.” The smart one.

I, on the other hand, was bored with school. I was made to sit in church after mass and they forgot about me. I walked all the way home just to be told that I had to walk all the way back to apologize to the nuns for leaving.

That’s when I decided that adults could not be trusted, especially Nita, our mother. It was her idea. Not my dad, not Charlie. I still trusted him and always did. 

So I became the rebel, the NOT shiny one. The one that got into lots of trouble, that told people off, that was hurt and didn’t know how to express that except in anger and resentment.

When I was twelve, standing by the back door in our house on 1549 South Ohio, young Master Ben Camino punched me in the stomach and completely knocked the air out of me. I thought I was going to die. He thought I was going to die. 

I can’t remember why he did it. Probably just because I was giving him shit about something. Or maybe he had just reach a point in his young sweet life that he had had enough of my reign of terror and torture. Thus ended my tyranny over him and "the little boys," although I think they always remained cautious of me. And mostly continued obeying me. 

However, dear Reader, I had bigger problems. I also was forced by default into the role of the little mother, a role that I was way too young to fill, for these above-mentioned boys. The problem was that our mother seemed to always have a terrible sinus headache and couldn’t get out of bed except in the afternoon, when I guess sinuses didn’t affect her so badly. 

Then she would get cleaned up and escape across the border (we only lived 2 miles from Mexico). Mom liked to hang out at Arturo’s a restraunt, bar, and honky tonk on the other side of the border. There, in Nuevo Progresso, she would drink, tell stories and fortunes, dance the soft shoe (whatever the heck that was), and occasionally get up on stage to play the bass guitar. All this before Charlie came home from work. She used to make me come with her, so that when Charlie came to find her, she wouldn’t get into so much trouble.

What does all this have to do with Advent? Good question. But since Ben Camino is usually able to figure something out, I will give it a try. 
 

Well Dear Reader, as my brother, whom I love more that words can express, has written, Advent is about the waiting. Yes, the waiting. Believe me, I know about the waiting.

Waiting for it to get better, waiting for someone to show up that could be in charge, waiting for her to love me, love us, love Charlie. Yes, I know about the waiting.

When I lost faith in adults, I also lost that innocent faith that children seem to possess. That faith in something like goodness. 

As an adult I got into some very dark places because of my choices, addictions and resentments, anger, and, I guess, loss of faith. Advent, Ben Camino says, is about waiting. But also about hope. I know for sure that I had lost hope. 

Over time I turned all of that inward. I could no longer blame, my mom, my sweet brother for getting away, my father for loving her so much, for choosing her over us. All that turned into hating myself.

In my favorite book, The Razor's Edge,  Sophie is back in the opium den with the low lifers. She tells our hero who tries to rescue her, "this is where I belong." I  related to that. I reached that place, a place so dark and loveless that I was waiting for death to release me.

I was deep down in that black hole of self-loathing. I was hopeless, tired of feeling anything, wanting the warm comfort of numbness, the black dark void.

  

Wow! Pretty heavy stuff. Sorry. But it's true. I was waiting in the dark without hope. And for some reason, stupid me asked the God I didn’t believe in to show me a sign. At the time, I was living on a boat in San Diego that, literally, was sinking. I was restoring it (another long story) but just got so too sick in addiction, depression, and self-loathing to work anymore. The boat was sinking, the sound of the bilge plump working to keep it afloat is what I would focus on. What I still remember. Waiting.

At some point, I heard or felt an inner voice, maybe it was only a thought. It was some sort of goodness, some sort of light. Looking back I believe it was my sign from the God I want to believe in.

In Twelve-step programs there is a saying that Hope without  action doesn’t achieve much. Hope can keep you breathing, but to change, really change, you need action. Somehow, I got off the boat, took responsibility for my life, for my care, and got off the resentment train. I had a bunch of people that didn’t give up on me, and it took a while for them to trust me again. But they waited.

And really good things came from all of this waiting, though it was painful. My experiences got me to a place where I know myself, know my heart. I love me-- bossy me, rebel me, loud mouth me, all of it. I can laugh at myself. I can try to help others who might be in dark places waiting. I can try to help them find the hope that can lead to action that can lead to purpose and self-worth. So that maybe they can once again see their lives as having value.

Eventually I got very involved in A.A., went to university, became a counselor, and for years was the program manager of a rehab center for Homeless Veterans in San Diego.

About ten years ago I moved back to Texas to get away from a troubled relationship and to help my brother Gordon care for our mom. With time, I grew to love her and understand that she did the best she could, that she didn’t “do” anything to me, she just wasn’t able to give me what I wanted or felt I needed from her. It wasn’t her fault, that was just the way she was made.

I only wish now that it didn’t take me so long to understand her. I really am a lot like her, only tougher. But even that is probably because of her.

So, today I choose to believe.

I owe it to the people that believed in me when I was unable to believe in myself. That is no small gift to bestow on another, dear readers. Believing in someone who is in the darkness? That's a miracle folks.

For years, I worked with adolescents who had mental health and drug problems. Really, they were kids like me who didn’t know how to tell folks they were hurting and who felt that nobody in the world cared about them.  But if you cared about them (I mean really cared, like I cared for them), they would want to “do good” to make you proud of them. They would try to believe, for you,that they really were worthy of being loved. Because you taught them that by doing it.  

I still sometimes feel sorry for myself, sit in the back of movie theaters and cry. Unless it’s a really good movie. But when you’ve been lucky enough to have been in A.A. for as long as I have with all of those silly sayings we have, you get conditioned to thinking that somehow it’s  going to work out and somehow you will be okay. IF you just add action to your hope. I’m getting sort of old now, so think I'll stick with hope.

My life is hard now, but it's better, much better than it was. And, man, was it ever dark for a long time. I won't get into all the crazy details tonight, Christmas Eve. Besides Ben Camino and I are running late for midnight mass. Maybe we will see you there.

It's more important just to say this, Dear Reader. All that waiting got me to a special place, a place where I can choose to believe and live in hope, and help others do that too. Even when the darkness comes, I don’t have to hang out there. And I'm not waiting anymore.

P.S.  My sobriety birthday is January 1, 1985. December 31^st I blacked out. My last black out. I now know that that darkest time was actually Advent 1984.  

*Melissa Lynn (Missy) Ricke works as an advocate at the National Domestic Violence Hotline. She also takes care of her brother every chance he has to get to Texas, except when she drives him mad by giving him three separate drafts for her meditation, each with additional material, one of them on paper. She also has two dogs, two cats, eleven chickens, two cockatiels, two parakeets, and, temporarily, Ben Camino's dog Rorie. She knitted little scarves for them this Christmas.